Category — Events

The June issue of the Living Digital magazine has a full feature story on Barcamps in India. The article is well researched and captures the essence of ‘unconferences’ rather well. Cheers to LD’s technology reporter, Binesh Kutty for the comprehensive coverage. Here is the print version of that article, while here is its online version.

Incidentally, Living Digital describes itself as India’s only digital lifestyle magazine and I think it is worth a look. The magazine covers the latest available products (in India) in the spheres of technology, computers, internet, gadgets, et al. I found it’s articles well crafted and I like their detail oriented style of reporting. What might prove to be a dampner in their circulation plans is to get tech enthusiasts to spend money to read every month, what they otherwise might find for free on the internet.

The biggest blogging extravaganza on Indian shores is happening in Chennai on the 9th & 10th September, 2006. The event is titled BLOGCAMP and attempts to bring the best of Indian bloggers together, in a (now ubiquitous) ‘unconference’ style event. The event has its own site and is slowly gathering momentum. This is the list of confirmed topics for the event till now.

And if its in Chennai and about blogging, no marks for guessing who the soul behind the event is. Kiruba Shankar, who is one of the most popular bloggers around, is at the helm of affairs for BlogCamp, as he has been, for so many blogging related events.

A new variety of momos is making its debut in India’s national capital. While the best momos currently in town are of the edible kind (to be found at Dilli Haat), that position is being seriously challenged by the latest entrants to the field- the geeky variety of momos .

MoMo is short for MobileMonday. Its a meetup for mobile enthusiasts from every sphere of the mobile ecosystem like telecom companies, content aggregators, VAS providers, application developers etc. And the first MobileMonday meet in Delhi is being held at the Adobe office in Noida on 5th August. The theme for the event is ‘Mobile 2.0: Future Trends and Technology. For details, check out the MoMoDelhi wiki.

The event is being organized by Prashant, Sunil, Sunandini and a few other mobile enthusiasts. I am also helping them out in any way I can.

I don’t exactly describe myself as a mobile geek but I see this as great opportunity to interact with the mobile community in Delhi and in the process, make a positive contribution in energizing Delhi’s techscape.

So head for the wiki and sign up as a participant or a speaker. It’s likely to be a day long event. And its open & free for all mobile enthusiasts in Delhi/NCR.

And before you start cursing me for it, my sincere apologies for the sic joke in the first para.

The Pune edition of BarCamp happened last Saturday. And while it has not been covered extensively in the blogosphere, here are a bunch of posts, that capture some of the sessions rather well.

With the Pune event, BarCamps have covered the entire Tier I cities of software/IT hubs in India (Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Mumbai & Pune). It remains to be seen if the tech communities in TierII cities (like Chandigarh, Kolkatta, Lucknow etc) can muster enough enthusiasm to organise it in their cities.

In fact, Hyderabad is taking a lead and planning its second BarCamp in July, this time focussing specifically on the mobile space. Thats the way to go! Cheers to the Hyderabad BarCamp organisers…

At this juncture, I can’t help but laugh at our initial skepticim when we were planning for BarCampDelhi in March.

Sometimes in life, even your most optimistic estimates prove to be grossly undervalued.

Manik & Jon are putting together a Ruby-on-Rails meetup in Delhi on Friday, 2nd June. If you are working with ROR or you wish to get initiated into agile web development using ROR, this is meant for you. Its likely to be a small, informal get-together over food & beverages.

The venue is Piccaddily (PVR Plaza) in Cannaught Place and it is planned for 8.00 p.m. Its on a shared cost basis.

If you wish to attend, drop Manik an email (so that he can arrange for adequate seating) .